Fundamentals of Construction and Simulation Game Design

Interaction Model

The player is almost always multipresent in a CSG because the designer has decided the player needs to see what is happening all over the game world. (Minecraft, as usual, is an exception, but in its creative mode the avatar can fly, making it effectively multipresent.) It’s difficult to control a large-scale process from the inside, where you can’t see everything that’s going on. Most CSGs don’t give the player any kind of avatar. However, players do like to see what the worlds they’re building look like from the inside, so sometimes games implement a walkthrough mode that lets players walk around the world in a first-person perspective. Walkthrough mode is entertaining and the player will enjoy it, but the primary interaction ...